Hearts broken as immigrants leave

Some Ruboma villagers in Ngara take local brew (rubisi) in the afternoon. Some of them are illegal immigrants with families with Tanzanians. PHOTO | elias msuya 

By  Elias Msuya, The Citizen Correspondent  (email the author)

In Summary

With a major swoop by authorities planned any time following expiry of a presidential deadline for illegal immigrants to vacate, a number of them are living behind broken hearts and dwindling business fortunes among the locals.

Ngara. Hundreds of families in Tanzania are pondering a bleak future owing to a big void created by the vacating masses of immigrants whose continued stay the government has described as untenable.

With a major swoop by authorities planned any time following expiry of a presidential deadline for illegal immigrants to vacate, a number of them are living behind broken hearts and dwindling business fortunes among the locals.

A week-long survey in the worst affected Kagera Region, reveals that the staggering movement of the illegal immigrants to mostly Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda is not without a share of whining from Tanzanians with intertwined family roots or deep business ties. Those who could not survive the purge are adeptly looking for means to beat the trap to continue with their lives even as local authorities give assurance of a more diplomatic recourse for genuinely separated families or investors. In many Ngara District villages, it is a story of mixed fortunes as the immigrants leave while locals are now forced to take measures to fill the socio-economic void.

At the Rusumo border, village chairman Dauson Mhuru alias Kadende, is an unhappy man. Aged, 52, he is married to a Rwandese woman, Eluminata. Together, they have six children and raising another nine from the man’s earlier marriage which broke up.

“I took this woman in the early 1990s and since then she has used a permit given by the Immigration offices. But now the government says she must leave the country, so how do I take care of my big family without her?” he asks.

“I have gone to the Immigration offices and they have told me that her permit has expired and they have stopped issuing new ones. So now my wife must go to Rwanda and find a passport and seek Tanzanian citizenship, which will take a long time and will affect my family,” he added.

Mhuru also added that he can’t go back to his first wife because they still have a matrimonial conflict. He said the family depended on income from a public toilet the wife was running at the border.

“Despite my being the village chairman, I earn nothing because we don’t have a salary. I am just volunteering. I am engaged in petty trade and my wife supervises our public toilet project that brings in money to feed and educate our children, some of whom are in secondary school.”

“They all need our material and moral support as their parents. The government should re think about its decision and spare families such misery, because this matter is affecting many families,” he adds.

Mhuru said he was saddened by claims that as village leaders, they had been accepting bribes to allow in illegal immigrants. “I don’t speak for others but in my village, immigrants are those who came in the 70s most of whom are women,” he explained. The same predicament faces Sadiki Elias of Ruboma Village. He has a Burundian wife known as Elizabeth and a child.

After President Kikwete issued the notice, his wife went to Burundi but came back after only a week, saying she needed medical care which was not available in Burundi. “I have lived with my wife for 10 years without a child but we got one last year. I have heard that people like her must leave the country but I need to take care of her and the child,” he said.

Elias knows nothing about the dependent permit as they have lived without it all this long. “I will go for it anytime but we have been told nothing so far.” Another villager, Marko Lameck, also has a Burundian wife and seems ignorant of the paper work